Etymological Dictionaries: From the Renaissance to the 20th Century

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Abstract

An etymological dictionary, that is a dictionary whose principal aim is to provide an index of the historical origins of words in a particular language, must be distinguished from a dictionary with incidental etymologies. Examples of the latter type represent a continuing prescriptivist tradition from antiquity, which held that knowing a word’s origin would provide insight into its ‘true’ meaning and was thus an important element in the prescript…